Do we not bleed? - Inside the Stephen Lawrence trial

The murder of a black teenager by a gang of white youths in 1993
was the case that sickened a nation, exposed the racism at the
heart of a British institution and shaped the future of the legal
system. But it took nearly 20 years and a tiny speck of forensic
evidence to bring the perpetrators to justice in the criminal trial
of the decade. Ed Caesar watched it unfold

Rex Features

At around 2.50pm on 3
January 2012, Court 16 at the Old Bailey fell quiet. The room was
not silent exactly. A murder trial is rarely still enough for
silence. Among the dozens of assembled lawyers, jurors,
journalists, members of the public, relatives of the victim,
defendants, policemen and court staff, someone is usually
whispering, or adjusting a chair, or dropping a pen. But, at this
moment, the room became noiseless enough that - had you been
concentrating on it - you might have heard the fizz of the Central
Criminal Court's heating ducts. It wasn't silence, but it felt like
it.

The clerk of the court, Lorraine Duggan, stood in her black gown
and silver wig in front of the judge's dais. She asked the
defendants to rise. Gary Dobson, who is 36, with fleshy cheeks and
short, dark hair in a side parting, pursed his lips. David Norris,
who is bony, with thinning hair and a waxy pallor, looks much older
than his 35 years. As he stood, he held his head tilted upwards and
cocked to one side.

A few feet away - and the other side of a heavy sheet of
reinforced Perspex - sat Neville Lawrence, a large West Indian man
in his late sixties with a grey beard and a wide, expressive face.
Eighteen years, eight months, eleven days and 16 hours previously,
his eldest son, Stephen, was murdered in southeast London. Despite
years of campaigning with Stephen's mother, Doreen, no one had ever
come close to being convicted for his son's murder, until now. As
he awaited the verdict, Neville's head rested against his right
hand, as if he were considering some knotty question. His vast body
did not move.

Duggan asked the foreman of the jury to rise. The juror who
addressed the court appeared to be in his late twenties. He had
fair hair and a two-day beard, and wore a red lumberjack shirt. For
almost every day of the seven-week trial, I had sat a yard away
from this young man. I'd watched him take copious notes; had
witnessed his growing stash of Twix bars beneath the jury's
worktop; and had smiled when he nodded off midway through the
closing speech from Dobson's barrister - only to wake, flushed, and
signal to the usher for fresh notepaper.

Now, he stood and faced the clerk.

"Members of the jury," Duggan said, "have you reached verdicts
in respect of both defendants upon which you are all agreed?"

They had.

"Members of the jury, do you find the defendant Gary Dobson
guilty or not guilty on this indictment of murder?"

In a faint voice, the foreman gave his reply.

This is the story of the trial of Gary Dobson and David Norris
for Stephen Lawrence's murder. It is not an account of his parents'
battle for justice, or the ramifications of Stephen's death, or the
racial attitudes of the Metropolitan Police. Acres of newsprint
have already been sacrificed to these subjects. No, this narrative
is simpler. It relates what was said and done over seven weeks in
Court 16 of the Old Bailey - a brightly lit room about the size of
two squash courts knocked together, furnished in blond wood and
green, studbacked leather.

This trial, as you must know, did not fall from the clear blue
sky. And, in order to understand how, on a wild day in January this
year, a young man with a two-day beard and a quiver in his voice
delivered a verdict that sounded across Britain, some background
might help.

At around 10.30pm on 22 April 1993, Stephen Lawrence was
fatally wounded in an unprovoked attack by a gang of between four
and six white youths.

First, the murder. At around 10.30pm on 22
April 1993, Stephen Lawrence was fatally wounded in an unprovoked
attack by a gang of between four and six white youths. He had been
waiting for a bus on Well Hall Road in Eltham with his best friend,
Duwayne Brooks, when he was surrounded, knifed twice and left for
dead. Lawrence was an easy-going A-level student from a supportive
family, who had ambitions to become an architect. He did not know
the group who attacked him and they did not know him. There
appeared to be only one catalyst for the violence: racism.
According to Brooks, one of the white youths called out "What?
What, nigger?" in the seconds before the fatal collision.

Despite the repellent nature of the crime, the police botched
the investigation, and failed to pursue several tip-offs regarding
the identities of the likely perpetrators. Although five teenagers
were arrested two weeks after the murder, a barrister later advised
the Crown Prosecution Service that there was not "a cat in hell's
chance" of convicting the boys. Ultimately, the CPS discontinued
its prosecution.

The Lawrences did not concede defeat. In 1996, they brought a
private prosecution against three of the five suspects, Neil
Acourt, Luke Knight and Dobson, which collapsed after a week. But,
despite and because of this setback, their cause began to be
championed across the political and racial spectrum. In 1997, the
Daily Mail splashed pictures of the five suspects across its front
page below its famous headline: "MURDERERS". In 1999, the
Macpherson report into the "events surrounding" Stephen's death
branded the police "institutionally racist". Most significantly,
the Lawrences' plight helped changed the law of double jeopardy, by
which those acquitted in front of a jury could not be retried for
the same crime. In 2003, partly because of the findings of the
Macpherson report, double jeopardy was annulled in serious criminal
cases. This development meant that the three men found "not guilty"
of Stephen's death could be retried if there was "compelling new
evidence".

It was not until 2006, however, that a new trial seemed anything
but theoretical. The police asked a pioneering forensics company
named LGC to examine the Lawrence exhibits for incriminating DNA
evidence - and, some years later, they pulled a rabbit from the
hat. Hairs, fibres and blood belonging to Lawrence were found on
garments seized from Dobson and Norris in 1993. Most significantly,
the scientists discovered a tiny blood stain, measuring 0.5mm by
0.25mm, which had soaked into the collar of a jacket believed to
have been worn by Dobson during the attack. After a four-year
review, costing £4m, the total of the new scientific evidence was
barely visible to the naked eye; but it would serve.

Armed with these findings, the police charged Dobson and Norris
with murder on 8 September 2010. The director of public
prosecutions then applied to the Court of Appeal to quash Dobson's
original acquittal in the private prosecution and won. Eighteen
years after that cold, clear night in Eltham - a lifetime,
Stephen's lifetime - there would be another murder trial.